eToro Buys Blockchain Company Firmo

eToro Buys Blockchain Company Firmo
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: eToro, Mergers & Acquisitions

Just weeks after launching in the U.S., trading and investment platform eToro announced plans to purchase Copenhagen-based blockchain firm Firmo. The terms of the deal, which marks eToro’s first acquisition, were not disclosed.

With today’s purchase, eToro aims to grow tokenized financial assets on its platform. To facilitate that growth, the Israel-based company is specifically interested in bringing on Firmo’s research and development team.

“This acquisition,” eToro CEO Yoni Assia told Bloomberg, “will help boost our growth in the future tokenized economy. We aim to be active players in blockchain consolidation.” And eToro may be ahead of the curve on this one– according to Bloomberg, tokenized assets will play a huge role in 2019 as investors seek to convert assets such as property and stocks into tradable digital assets.

Founded in 2017, Firmo offers a programming language called FirmoLang that runs on a sidechain. Exchanges can leverage FirmoLang to create financial instruments such as P2P lending platforms or cryptocurrency derivatives with tokens. And Firmo is versatile, allowing the tokens to be run on any blockchain.

eToro most recently showcased CopyFunds for Partners at FinovateEurope 2017. Originally known for being a social trading platform, the company began pioneering bitcoin trading in 2013 via CFDs and in 2017 allowed clients to trade and invest in Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies. eToro has raised $223 million since it was founded in 2007.

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BioCatch Teams Up with Entersekt

BioCatch Teams Up with Entersekt
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Entersekt

A new partnership between behavioral biometrics innovator BioCatch and fintech solution provider Entersekt will help financial services companies offer more secure digital banking and payment experiences for their customers. With options like passwordless login and enhanced remote user registration, the collaboration will give clients a “one-stop-shop” for continuous and multi-factor authentication.

Entersekt SVP for North America Sherif Samy called BioCatch’s technology “an exciting alternative” to the biometric-based security solutions already provided on its platform. “It will add value for our customers, especially in usability, by helping to determine when step-up authentication is really required and when we can safely leave the user to go about their business uninterrupted,” Samy said.

BioCatch analyzes the interactions between users and their devices to reduce fraud and provide online identity verification. The partnership means that when BioCatch’s biometric behavioral technology identifies anomalous behavior, it sends an alert to Entersekt’s security platform for an out-of-band, multi-factor authentication (MFA) via device validation.

“Our combined approach with Entersekt answers the call,” Avi Turgeman, BioCatch founder and CTO said of the challenge of simultaneously providing a seamless customer experience and strong online security.” The collaboration, he said, joins “(b)ehavioral biometrics as ‘who you are,’ the mobile device as ‘what you have,’ and the additional elements required to step up a transaction in real time if there is a problem.”

BioCatch demonstrated its Passive Biometrics technology at FinovateFall 2014. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Israel, the company announced earlier this month that it was adding touchscreen pressure to its set of behavioral biometrics. At the beginning of the year, BioCatch unveiled a new solution designed to help fight “vishing,” a form of automated push payment fraud.

With investors including Blumberg Capital, OurCrowd, and Maverick Ventures Israel, BioCatch has raised $41.6 million in funding.

South Africa-based Entersekt presented Securing Mobile Applications Through Transport Layer Diversity at our developers conference, FinDEVr SiliconValley in 2014. The company’s technology is deployed in 45 countries around the world, and defends 150 million transactions a month from cyberfraud.

Last month, Samy was recognized by One World Identity (OWI) as a top influencer in the field of digital identity. Entersekt began 2019 with a number of major hires, bringing on digital identity and business development specialist Jennifer Singh, as well as adding a country manager for South Africa and a VP of engineering services.

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Taulia Upgrades with AI

Taulia Upgrades with AI
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Taulia

Alternative supply chain financing company Taulia announced this week it is tapping into AI to boost its platform’s Working Capital, Invoicing, and Intelligent Platform programs.

The new AI engine leverages data on supplier behavior and combines it with external factors to help clients make more precise predictions, and ultimately better decisions, on early payment programs and working capital strategies. Vincent Beerman, Senior Director of Product at Taulia, said that the AI improvements will translate to “less risk and more reward.”

“This is an exciting and massive achievement for Taulia,” said Cedric Bru, CEO. “This step in our product journey is all about bringing knowledge and decision-making to our clients to make early payment programs stronger, more efficient and more cost effective for all parties in the supply chain.”

Founded in 2009, Taulia helps businesses build healthy supply chains by providing supply chain financing options that offer flexible payment terms. The tools help businesses accelerate payments and free up working capital. Suppliers that use Taulia receive financing offers based on their historical payment behavior, the APR they are willing to accept, and their financial standing.

At FinovateEurope 2015, Taulia debuted Enhanced Discounting to the European market. Headquartered in San Francisco, Taulia’s network connects 1.6 million businesses across 168 countries and has accelerated more than $91 billion in early payments.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: BioCatch, Entersekt, eToro, Minna Technologies, OurCrowd, Taulia, Tink

On Finovate.com

  • eToro Buys Blockchain Company Firmo.

Around the web

  • ING Belgium and ING Netherlands invite Minna Technologies to participate in the ING FinTech Village accelerator.
  • Tink delivers split transactions feature.
  • Pitchbook ranks OurCrowd as most active Israeli VC firm in terms of the number of deals.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Streamdata.io Acquired by Axway

Streamdata.io Acquired by Axway
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Mergers & Acquisitions, Streamdata.io

Data insights company Streamdata.io has been acquired by Axway Software in a deal this week. The France-based startup sold for an undisclosed amount.

Vince Padua, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Axway, said that the company made the purchase to “enable [its] customers and partners with a prescriptive journey toward digital transformation and hybrid integration” and to “advance [its] strategy in enabling businesses to accelerate their IT and digital transformation.”

Streamdata.io’s event-driven API management will boost Axway’s AMPLIFY integration platform. Streamdata.io brings two assets to the table– its event-driven API management that helps support real-time and event-driven use cases, and its digital transformation methodology designed around API adoption and maturity. Streamdata.io’s offerings, on the other hand, will benefit from Axway’s 11,000 customers across 100 countries.

“Axway and Streamdata.io share a passion for data. In joining Axway, we can help our customers stay ahead of the digital transformation curve by securely enabling real-time data,” said Streamdata.io CEO Eric Horesnyi. “We look forward to jointly paving the way for one of the most innovative hybrid integration platforms on the market.”

Founded in 2008, Streamdata.io had raised $12.2 million before today’s acquisition. At FinDEVr London 2017, Horesnyi showed how developers can leverage Streamdata.io to code real-time mobile trading in less than 15 minutes with any API. Last June, the company unveiled its API Gallery featuring more than 360 different entities with 14,400+ API paths spanning 420 topics.

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Instarem Raises Capital; TurnKey Lender Goes Live in Malaysia

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: CustomerXPs, Finovate Global, Tinkoff Bank, Turnkey Lender, wipro

Finovate Global is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Asia-Pacific

  • TurnKey Lender opens new office in Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
  • Instarem raises $41 million to fund global expansion.
  • Singapore FinTech Association and FinTech Australia ink Memorandum of Understanding.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian online lender OneFi to acquire Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify.
  • Finextra features its list of the top South African fintech startups to look out for in 2019.
  • Born2Invest highlights the fintechs in Africa’s emerging startup industry.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Tinkoff Mobile, a subsidiary of Tinkoff Bank, announces service in six new regions.
  • CEE fintech watchers are keeping an eye on the pending launch of the “first bank for the Russian Internet” VR_Bank.
  • Vienna, Austria-based fintech Bitpanda adds its first stablecoin, Tether, introducing the new asset class on its trading platform.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Egypt’s central bank sets aside $58 million to fund fintech startups in the country.
  • Arabian Business looks at the continued dominance of cash in Saudi Arabia, despite the growth of the country’s fintech sector.
  • ZDNet reviews how new technologies like AI and automation represent challenge and opportunity for countries in the MENA region.

Central and South Asia

  • Wipro launches its AI and machine learning-powered accounts payable, KYC, and other solutions on Amazon Web Services.
  • Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon goes live with Clari5 Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Solution to address money laundering threats.
  • Fintech Futures looks at Indian micro lending startup, Spoon, as it prepares to go live.
  • PakWired reviews the likelihood that Pakistan will legalize cryptocurrencies by the end of the year.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Analysts cast a wary eye at new cryptocurrency regulations from the Bank of Mexico.
  • Bob’s Guide features a deep dive into the evolving Brazilian payments market.
  • New Cayman Islands-based fintech consulting firm, Cartan Group, opens for business.

Top image designed by Freepik

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Project BankNorth Partners with nCino Ahead of 2020 Launch

Project BankNorth Partners with nCino Ahead of 2020 Launch
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: nCino

Project BankNorth, a U.K.-based SME lender, has teamed up with nCino, and will leverage the fintech’s Bank Operating System to better serve the financing needs of small businesses when it goes live in 2020.

nCino International Managing Director Pullen Daniel praised BankNorth as an “up-and-coming challenger.” He said, “The BankNorth team is extremely experienced and well-regarded, and were able to identify a gap in the SME market upon which to build their unique offering.”

Customer experience was at the heart of BankNorth’s decision to partner with nCino. Founder and CEO Jonathan Thompson underscored the value of working with nCino at the early stages. “It’s critical we provide a smooth and intuitive interface for our customers and introducers in order to deliver a fantastic customer experience,” Thompson said. “Working with nCino early on in our development allows us to tailor our whole business around delivering an engaging and differentiated customer experience.”

BankNorth is backed by veterans of Atom Bank, HSBC, First Direct, Santander, and RBS, and represents a blend of both traditional and challenger banking worlds. At the beginning of the year, the company announced four new senior hires, including a chief technology officer. Backing BankNorth are GrowthFunders and G.Ventures, the trading arms of Growth Capital Ventures. The challenger has yet to secure a banking license.

nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. The cloud-based technology combines customer onboarding, CRM, account opening, loan origination, workflow, credit analysis, ECM, and instant reporting, to help banks drive revenue and leverage analytics to better serve their customers.

Earlier this month, nCino announced that Swedish SME lender DBT Företagslån and Australian commercial property lender Thinktank are leveraging nCino’s Bank Operating System to automate workflows and enhance customer journeys. In February, the company and partner Accenture said they would broaden the scope of their alliance to reach FIs in the Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions.

Founded in 2012, nCino has raised $133.2 million in funding. The company includes Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners among its investors.

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Finovate Alumni News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Avaloq, Feedzai, Jumio, Kontomatik, SocietyOne, Streamdata.io

On Finovate.com

Around the web

  • Avaloq signs clients for PSD2 service.
  • Kontomatik enters Southeast Asian market.
  • Feedzai named best in class in fraud and AML vendor market by Aite Group.
  • Yahoo! Finance features SocietyOne and the growth of P2P lending in Australia.
  • American Banker: Jumio teams up with ComplyAdvantage to help banks ID crooks.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million

Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions

Wealthtech innovator Envestnet announced earlier this month plans for its tenth acquisition. The Chicago-based company will bolster its existing advisor offerings with the purchase of PIEtech, a deal expected to close mid-year 2019.

PIEtech is the parent company of MoneyGuide, a suite of goals-based financial planning applications for advisors. “Financial planning is a key component of our vision for enabling Financial Wellness,” said Jud Bergman, Chairman and CEO of Envestnet. “With MoneyGuide’s financial planning applications more deeply integrated into Envestnet’s wealth management solutions, enterprises, advisors and their clients can benefit from a frictionless wealth management technology solution across the application stack, driving higher productivity and better client outcomes.”

Envestnet will continue to build on the success of MoneyGuide’s offerings, including MoneyGuideOne, MoneyGuidePro and MoneyGuideElite. These solutions, which serve tens of thousands of financial advisors, are integrated with more than 150 wealth management providers.

Envestnet will leverage the acquisition to complement its Logix and Apprise features to provide advisors and their clients with access to financial planning capabilities. The deal will also enable Envestnet to offer additional domestic and international financial wellness solutions and will boost cross-selling opportunities.

Envestnet | Yodlee showcased its predictive financial wellness and intelligence solution at FinovateFall 2018. Late last year, the company entered into a strategic partnership with Blackrock in which Envestnet integrated BlackRock’s Digital Wealth technologies into its platform.

Envestnet was founded in 1999 and acquired Yodlee in 2015 for $660 million. Envestnet | Yodlee is a public company listed on NYSE under the ticker ENV. It has a market capitalization of $3 billion.

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ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text

ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide

ACI Worldwide is bringing text-to-pay technology to billers courtesy of a new partnership with Solutions by Text. ACI will integrate Solutions by Text’s Pay-by-Text software into its UP Bill Payments solution, enabling businesses to receive payments from customers via SMS. The new option will give customers new payment flexibility, make on-time payments more likely, and keep collection costs low.

Pointing to the high open rate of text messages (98%) and the positive response customers tend to have toward text billing reminders, Solutions by Text founder and CEO Danny Cantrell highlighted the way the partnership will improve the “overall digital experience” for the customer.

“As smartphone use continues to advance,” Cantrell said, “offering customers the option to pay-by-text is quickly becoming a necessity as it improves the payment experience through payment reminders and mobile-enabled payment systems.”

ACI business leader for biller solutions Andrew Sajeski echoed Cantrell’s sentiments. He called the smartphone “the device of choice for digital payments,” and said the integration with Solutions by Text would “increase consumers’ ability to pay their bills on time in a more convenient way.”

A division of Marketing Response Solutions, a multi-service consulting firm which was founded in 1995, Solutions by Text was launched in 2008. The company streamlines and improves client communications by creating advanced, mobile-enabled business solutions using SMS. A member of the Inc 5000, the company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

ACI Worldwide presented Simple, Global, and Secure eCommerce Payments with ACI Worldwide’s Next Generation API at FinDEVr SiliconValley 2016. The company also demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2011, partnering with MShift to offer mobile delivery of ACI Enterprise Banker.

Last month, ACI Worldwide announced that it had agreed to acquire Speedpay, the U.S. billpay business of Western Union, in a deal valued at $750 million. Back in December, the company teamed up with fellow Finovate alum BioCatch to help provide enhanced online and mobile fraud detection using BioCatch’s behavioral biometrics technology.

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Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs

Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Karmic Labs, Mergers & Acquisitions

Business payment solutions provider Prepaid Technologies has acquired Karmic Labs’ Dash, as well as other select assets, reports Jane Connolly of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication.)

The Dash prepaid purchasing card portfolio and expense management solution will be added to Prepaid Technologies’ existing suite of services. Several members of Karmic’s key personnel will join the Prepaid Technologies team.

Prepaid Technologies provides customers with a mobile-focused platform enabling business owners to move money in real-time to individual cards and accounts for everyday purchases.

“This cardholder portfolio more than doubles our existing expense management business, elevating purchasing to the level of our payroll, incentive and rewards lines of business,” said Prepaid Technologies CEO, Stephen Faust.

Over the coming months Prepaid Technologies will integrate the Dash portfolio and will provide clients with access to additional solutions, including: payroll card programs that it claims will improve bottom-line performance and value for employees; reward and incentive cards; state-of-the-art API Payment Integrations that will support faster, more efficient internal operations.

Current Karmic and Dash customers will also receive an expanded range of services, including Prepaid Technologies’ dedicated customer support.

Karmic Labs demonstrated Dash at FinovateSpring 2015. The company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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Finovate Alumni News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: ACI Worldwide, AlphaPoint, Capsilon, CustomerXPs, DocuSign, Envestnet, Insuritas, Jack Henry, Karmic Labs, Kinetica, MX, NetGuardians, Onfido, Personetics, SWITCH, Tinkoff Bank, Turnkey Lender, WorldPay

On Finovate.com

  • ACI Worldwide Partners with Solutions by Text.
  • Envestnet to Acquire PIEtech for $500 Million.

Around the web

  • Prepaid Technologies Acquires Dash from Karmic Labs.
  • Switch launches its issuer-branded CardUpdatr app.
  • Kinetica unveils its active analytics platform that makes it easier to deliver smart analytics applications at scale.
  • Forbes interviews co-founder and CEO of Onfido, Husayn Kassai.
  • Tinkoff Mobile, a subsidiary of Tinkoff Bank, announces service in six new regions.
  • DocuSign launches its DocuSign Agreement Cloud to help companies better manage business agreements digitally.
  • Capsilon announces the beta launch of its digital underwriter solution.
  • AlphaPoint adds DiamondBack stablecoin to its crypto exchange.
  • Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon goes live with Clari5 Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Solution to address money laundering threats.
  • PYMNTS: Amazon and Worldpay team up on one-click commerce.
  • NetGuardians‘ AI fraud-prevention software available on Microsoft Azure.
  • TurnKey Lender signs partnership agreement with Refinitiv.
  • MX and Personetics partner to bring AI-driven insights to financial institution customers.
  • ICBA and Jack Henry’s ProfitStars expand preferred service provider program with remote deposit capture solutions.
  • Insuritas and Oregon Mutual announce partnership to offer auto and home insurance solutions through meta-agency platform.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

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